We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
There's a long-distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write. There's a woman I long to touch and I'm missing her so much, but she's drifting like a satellite. There's a neon light ablaze in a green smoky haze, and laughter down on Elizabeth Street And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat. Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart. A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted to me the time and the place that we'd part.
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage As she winds back the clock and she turns back the page Of a book that nobody can write. Oh, where are you tonight?
The rest of the astonishing lyrics are below the fold -
Buddy is right: it took balls for a young kid - a boy, really, a recklessly-ambitious first-year college dropout - to do this old song on TV in 1963 (Bob's first TV performance). He used Woody as his adult accessory ego. Artists always do things like that, borrowing and stealing ego-ideals to help fill out their ever-growing selves.
Hermit Crabs, as I have often seen on Cape Cod, sometimes will take on a moon shell far too large for them to fill. They can hardly drag it across the mud. Eventually, if lucky, they grow into it. And, if luckier still, someday have to find a new larger shell to inhabit.
Bob will be forever an old soul, and forever young. Restless, wonderfully lost, and doing much of the seeking and searching for us drones.
Thanks for the rare pic, Mr. Vanderleun. The Dylanologist and I figure this is in the late 60s in the Hamptons. Can't say I'm surprised that Bob didn't own tennis whites, but surely he owned a pair of sneakers...
One of his best, I think. 1997, such a short time ago. Song brings tears to my eyes. Even if you aren't a fan, give this a try - do it for me, your Editor Dog in Chief:
One of my favorite topics to get annoyed about here are the American (and northern European) food fetishes.
Indeed it is a symptom of prosperity that a civilization can obsess about what they eat rather than whether they eat. This occurrence is an anomaly in the short history of Homo sapiens. In the past couple of decades, many have fetishized their food as if what you eat were a major determinant of your fate in life (fatness aside - but recent studies say being fat isn't so bad for health either). "Eat this - it's good for you." Says who? Grandma? Brown rice and whole grains? Are you kidding me?
I have had four main categories of gripes:
1. What the latest research says. Eat Broccoli, then it's Avoid Broccoli. Avoid salt, but now salt is encouraged. Potatoes are carcinogenic. Avoid fats, but now it's avoid carbs (carbs will fatten you up and fat won't). My point is that whatever you read will be obsolete in a few years. Nobody on earth knows what the ideal human diet is, and that is because humans are basically opportunistic omnivores, designed to feed on whatever they can find.
2. "Supplements": A major scam and rip-off with a remarkable marketing machine, but I will not talk about that today.
3. "Genetic engineering": Unless you collect your food in the woods, pretty much everything you eat has been genetically engineered for thousands of years (except maybe mushrooms).
4. "Organic food": Back to clever marketing again directed to those who know no science or biology. Finally, Scientific American has a piece ripping apart the entire "organic" food fetish. Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming. Want to pay extra for "organic" for no reason whatsoever? Whole Foods shareholders thank you very much.
Sometimes I think that food fetishes must be a mild, verging on normative, form of eating disorder. I'll have my hot dogs with chopped onion and extra bright yellow mustard, thanks, with Lay's potato chips and a cold beer. Is there anything better on a summer day?
In his famous 1968 interview (the very year of protest) conducted for Sing Out! by his friends John Cohen and Happy Traum, Dylan was asked by Traum: “Do you foresee a time when you’re going to have to take some kind of a position?†Dylan answered in one word: “No.†Traum, obviously upset, argued that “every day we get closer to having to make a choice,†because, he explained, “events of the world are getting closer to us … as close as the nearest ghetto.†Dylan’s answer: “Where’s the nearest ghetto?"
When he got to the issue of the Vietnam War, Traum told Dylan: “Probably the most pressing thing going on in a political sense is the war,†and that artists like him “feel it is their responsibility to say something.†Dylan responded by telling Traum: “I know some very good artists who are for the war.†He then added that this painter he knows is “all for the war. He’s just about ready to go over there himself. And I can comprehend him.†Moreover, when Traum suggested he argue with the painter, Dylan asked, “Why should I?â€
This is a man who will not be pwned, and he has never needed to be told to "Shut up and sing."
I don't think we have ever posted a link to Dylan Radio. Time to correct that error now.
It can be an addiction for those interested in Dylan's music. Lots of live performances. Fascinating stuff. Dylan is a walking jukebox of the American Songbook.
Some of it is covers of Dylan tunes. I think it runs 24 hrs/day, streamed and for free (unless you hit the tip jar).
The site is great fun. Ain't these intertunnels cool?
Give Dylan Radio a try for a day, Captain Tom, while flying ties and tying flies. You too, Sipp - and Vandy.
In the 20 years to 2010, he gave 2,045 concerts, according to the fan site ExpectingRain.com, where you can study the setlist for every one of those nights. In April he will play in Singapore, Australasia and—if Beijing lets him in, after rebuffing him last year—China. In the summer he is expected in Europe. Not for nothing are his wanderings known as the Never Ending Tour.
and
His predicament raises the opposite question: how does it feel to be so known? Dylan gives an answer in “Chroniclesâ€. “The big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny...I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper...I really was never any more than what I was—a folk musician who gazed into the grey mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze...I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad.†Maybe that is his achievement: to have stayed sane.
Bob's Where are you tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) from the under-rated and garage-recorded Street Legal (1978):
There's a long-distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write. There's a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much but she's drifting like a satellite. There's a neon light ablaze in this green smoky haze, laughter down on Elizabeth Street And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat. Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart. A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted to me the time and the place that we'd part.
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page Of a book that no one can write. Oh, where are you tonight?
We used to feature a weekly Bob music video, with lyrics, as a "Free Ad for Bob,", but they have all been taken away from YouTube. However, in cleaning out my image closet I did find a few Bob pics to post:
Coolest version of this dumb song ever made. That's New Orleans, or meant to be, I suspect. Minnesota accordion plus New Orleans. Only Dylan would do that.
One of the most interesting features of the show was Dylan the DJ, or his persona as a DJ. He never denied who it was behind the microphone, dropping, here and there, little jokes or anecdotes about his life as a musician among musicians. With his choice of themes, listeners learned, among other things, that the Bob Dylan who decades earlier wrote a song about the New York Yankees pitcher Catfish Hunter remains very much a baseball fan, enough so to offer his own a cappella singing of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on his show entitled “Baseball.” But Dylan also took on a role, as a disc jockey from out of the past but also as instructor of music appreciation, biographer, comedian, commentator, and dispenser of recipes, household hints, and other bits of useful information.
At Pajamas, "Bob Dylan’s Great Travel Song, "When I Paint My Masterpiece" is a great summer vacation song—particularly if you’re heading to Europe, as right about now, a lot of Americans are." Touching base with their cultural roots and with history.
Since SONY has been removing Bob's things from YouTube - and I cannot find The Band's version - I can only offer good old Jerry with his pickin' version:
I had best post this live performance today, before it's taken down from YouTube. It's a rare performance, from last week, of his What Good Am I?, from his 1989 Oh Mercy! album.
What honest human has never asked himself such questions?
What good am I, if I'm like all the rest If I just turn away when I see how you're dressed If I shut myself off so I can't hear you cry What good am I ?
What good am I if I know and don't do If I see and don't say, if I look right through you If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin' sky What good am I ?
What good am I while you softly weep And I hear in my head what you say in your sleep And I freeze in the moment like the rest who don't try What good am I ?
What good am I then to others and me If I had every chance and yet still fail to see If my hands are tied must I not wonder within Who tied them and why and where must I have been.
What good am I if I say foolish things And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings And I just turn my back while you silently die What good am I ?
This is in Linz (home of the Linzer torte, and a place I will visit in August). That is Bob noodling on the organ.
Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love?), from Empire Burlesque, 1985
Sample of the lyrics:
Well, they're not showing any lights tonight And there's no moon There's just a hot-blooded singer Singing 'Memphis in June' And they're beating the devil out of a guy Who's wearing a powder-blue wig Later he'll be shot For resisting arrest I can still hear his voice crying In the wilderness What looks large from a distance Close up ain't never that big.
I never could learn to drink that blood And call it wine I never could learn to hold you, love And call you mine.
Sony has been pulling all of the Bob YouTubes they can find, but I found an interesting (outtake?) of Tell Ol' Bill (with different lyrics) which I can link but cannot embed.
For those who feel that they do not have enough Bob Dylan in their lives, there is always Dylan Radio. All Dylan, all the time. A bit of an overdose, in my opinion. They never mix it up with any Schubert concertos.
It brought to mind an interview with the late great Lena Horne which Mark Simone replayed on the radio the other day. She was saying that she approached a song as a short play, and that she focused on telling the story more than on the music. She said she talked the song-story before she ever added the music. Simone told Horne that Sinatra had once told him something similar; that he wanted to distinguish himself from other singers by making the the words more important to him than the tune or the notes. He disparaged other pop singers as note-hitters wedded to the tune, rather than good story-tellers. Of course, Horne and Sinatra could do both.
You obviously cannot compare Dylan's singing to those two masters, but you can compare his phrasing, word-handling, and story-telling to anybody's. Plus he writes his songs himself. Writing a good song that sticks to the soul is lots tougher than writing a good poem - which is plenty tough itself.
But I don't know what I am talking about...I truly do not.
Is Bob Dylan a musical thief? Of course he is, to some extent. So what?
Sheesh, most singers don't even write the songs they sing.
Mrs. BD told me that Martha Graham said "If you're going to steal, steal from the best."
I remember flying home on Aer Lingus one time, listening to the Irish music. I thought to myself, "Damn. That's the tune of Boots of Spanish Leather. Where did Dylan hear that?" He's a human jukebox. Not the Second Coming, but a darned interesting jukebox, and he has gone the distance.
Smart, perceptive, and eccentric too, with or without a rhyming dictionary. He adds a "special sauce," as they say on Wall St.
I cannot find Bob's haunting solo version from his record, so I'll post a less impressive live version from '95.
The lyrics:
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide I live in another world where life and death are memorized Where the earth is strung with lover's pearls and all I see are dark eyes.
A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.
They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is But I feel nothing for their game, where beauty goes unrecognized All I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes.
Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel Hunger pays a heavy prize to the falling gods of speed and steel Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.
One of my favorite topics to get annoyed about here are the American (and northern European) food fetishes. 
To my fans and followers.
From Radosh's Dy
I don't think we have ever posted a link to 
Still sane? Dylan turns 70 in May, and is still on the road. From 
It's the time of year for some 
WSJ thinks maybe Bob 
Sean Wilentz, author of 
Sony has been pulling all of the Bob YouTubes they can find, but I found an interesting (outtake?) of Tell Ol' Bill (with different lyrics) which 
Is Bob Dylan a musical thief? Of course he is, to some extent. So what? 
Story 